SWF was simultaneously brilliant and a festering wound that required amputation, and I would have welcomed a replacement that wasn't the biggest attack surface on the internet. I too love Homestar Runner.
IMO the fact that it belonged to Adobe was the biggest problem, if SWF had been managed by a more capable software org it could have been maintained in a way that kept it from getting banned from the internet. And remember, that's how bad it was - it got banned from the internet because it was absolutely indefensible to leave it around. SWF getting cancelled magically stopped every single family member I have from calling me with weird viruses and corruption they managed to stumble into. I saw more malicious code execution through SWF than I saw from my dumb little cousins torrenting sus ROMs and photoshop crackers. I'd rather not have it than have those problems persist.
Working as an eLearning dev around flash is what got me to completely disable it on my home computer... only in a VM, where I would reset after use was I ever using it. It was useful, but way too easy to abuse.
Check out The Immortality Key by Brian Muraresku, it has a few theories on through lines. The book is about these mystery cults, and specifically how they may have been using and early form of LSD. Part of the theory is the classically reported ego death experience might be what is referenced by the rebirth/resurrection claims. As for overlaps with Christianity, there are lots of fun theories including that John the Baptist was an initiate and may have actually initiated Jesus. This is a little difficult to square with the fact that the greek mystery cults claim to have exclusively initiated women, but hey they don't call them mystery cults because they are fully understood.
Buying wholesale and selling retail isn't arbitrage. Wholesale pricing is cheaper precisely because it is a bulk price. There is an overhead to selling individual units. A retail operator adds value by introducing individual unit liquidity, with the price premium of the individual unit offsetting the risks involved in paying the fixed costs of retail (rent etc.), not selling all the inventory, and having enough left over for a profit.
probably best to understand the way people use the term as a risk spectrum, from riskless arbitrage where there is no window for losing money, through say a real estate deal where you find a seller at a good price, and you find a buyer at the market price, and you insert yourself in the middle (a perfect houseflip) even though you don't have the capital to suffer the loss if things get screwed up, to an antique shop that buys on speculation and sells to reliable clients. A pawn shop is arbitrage too.
generally people mean by arbitrage that you enter into a transaction having both a seller and a buyer in mind, or you have two liquid markets with different prices.
I guess I don't get what's objectionable about working for someone who doesn't understand how you do what you do. Isn't what matters being appreciated? I certainly can't work for someone who doesn't value what I do, but I can care less whether they actually understand how I do it.
I guess it depends on the perspective, and the attitudes of those above you towards your work. If people and product managers are showing deference to your team's expertise in this knowledge domain (whatever it may be), then that's good, and I don't think anyone here is going to complain about that working relationship.
Where folks get objectionable (myself included) is when those same managers conflate superior rank with superior knowledge. It's the CIO demanding we use a specific product suite without objective justification, or the SVP forcing a given architecture because it suits their political objectives rather than organizational ones. That's presently on the rise as tech companies (in particular) bring in "outside talent" (aka, the same failed-upwards managers and leaders of unrelated enterprises in their social circles) instead of promoting from within or hiring qualified candidates, and it results in a whole host of grievances and problems that can rot the org from the inside out.
The clue is the rise of these sorts of posts, trying to coach us on how to step into leadership roles and transition from Individual Contributors to People or Product Managers instead. The takeaway I got was less "managers shouldn't code", and more "managers should not assume their code is better or necessary just because they're managers"; in other words, to strike a balance.
And if they have no clue what the job is about they will inevitably appreciate/promote/give raises to people who talk the most random jargon in meetings rather than to people who actually work.
I have also had huge results with 5-HTP (in combination with vitamin D). I had that breakthrough in 2017 and it has been a consistent improvement ever since so I feel comfortable suggesting it. I have more recently had a similar "OMFG" moment with supplementing creatine but I'm only a few months into that so not ready to make claims about durability. I was diagnosed with chronic depression as a child (in 1994) and have taken Wellbutrin, Prozac, Lexapro, and Celexa at different points in my life. Personally I never experienced benefits that outweighed the side effects with any of those drugs. Taking an approach that centers on whole-body (and really specifically intestinal) serotonin has made the biggest difference in my life. Avoiding processed carbohydrates like pasta and bread has also been a piece of the puzzle, but unequivocally 5-HTP + VitD has been the standout difference maker.
When I worked with Rdio the RIAA sued them because users would make playlists named "Now that's what I call music < X >" with the same songs as the CDs. All the songs were fully licensed to be streamed on the service. The RIAA won those lawsuits.
edit: they might have actually settled, but the RIAA got what they wanted with no concessions
The RIAA doesn't seem to have a very good track record in cases that go to court, but the whole 'we're gonna sue you for eleventy billion dollars and destroy your life with our thousands of lawyers, but give us $20 right now and we'll call it even' seems to be quite effective.
You know, you might be right that in the end it was a settlement of sorts. I remember for a while they were fighting it specifically because it was about playlists (named groups of songs) which was not defined in the licensing in a way that clearly did or did not overlap with albums. The more I think about it, there was such a threat of refusing to renew licenses that it's possible they renewed with explicit language that prevented these playlists. I know for sure the playlists were purged. All said it was a hilarious amount of lawyer money over some of the dumbest CDs ever.
Software is not an industry famous for socially/emotionally aware practitioners. Lots of people make perfect the enemy of "good enough", or leave useless PR nits to show that they are participating, or disregard the level of effort involved and cut straight to their pet grievances. These are all ways of disrespecting somebody's work that you're going to encounter a lot.
One piece of advice I give all new jr devs (I've mentored more than 100 at this point) is: "Don't feel feelings about your code, because your code doesn't feel any feelings about you. Investing emotions in your code is entering into an abusive relationship".
It's hard when you're proud of something you made and it gets criticized, or replaced in production in a short amount of time, or immediately polluted by somebody who doesn't seem to care as much as you did. Try to realize that the actionable grievance is the wasted time and effort. It can be hard to get people to respect your feelings, but it is pretty easy to make a case that wasting your time and effort should be avoided.
So many adjectives... and "radical" in the title is a doozy considering this article is essentially a stoner summary of LeDoux's "Deep History of Ourselves" with the science replaced with thesaurus suggestions.
> This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more details.
Warranty disclaimers may (or may not, depending on the law of the effected jurisdiction) limit liability for claims on an implied warranty theory, but they certainly don't apply to tortious interference or unfair competition claims.
I’m not saying the claims here are valid, but the warranty disclaimers don't seem at all relevant to the bases of liability asserted.
I haven’t bothered to look at the actual filing, but none of the causes of action mentioned in the article were about warranty, merchantability, or fitness for purpose.
yeah, this part is where I am confused - the dispute itself is about bad business to business behavior, but the class status of this lawsuit drills down to harm caused to end users. I'm trying to figure out what expectations end users are entitled to since it's obviously not the case that WP users can hold Automattic directly liable when they are hacked.
I _think_ the argument is that WPE gave them the (at the time reasonable) expectation that risk mitigation was handled by them, and Automattic made that expectation impossible to meet retroactively hence tortious interference, but is there language that passes the liability up the chain from the end users? To me it seems like WPE has a case but the end users as a class might face headwinds.
And for everybody angrily downvoting me I agree with you that Matt is an asshole but that doesn't mean I don't want to understand the nuance of a class claim in a case like this.
IANAL. The chain of argument is roughly: WP was transferred to WPorg -> WPorg promised open access to WP ecosystem (including plugins) -> Matt/Automattic retained effective control over WPorg -> Matt/Automattic abused their control over WPorg to sabotage WPE's ability to provide contractual services -> WPE's customers suffered.
EDIT: I think the part causing most confusion is relying on customer's expectation that they are NOT using WPE's product, but rather using WP plus WPE's services. I.e. If X contractor installs a thing to your house/car/whatever and then manufacturer of that thing then uses it to sabotage your business, you get a claim against manufacturer, not you against contractor.
This is not about any warranties at all. The warranty and liability disclaimer applies strictly to those parts and is used to establish
This suit is about unfair business practices: tort and ratchet. The suit raises a claim that Matt publicly boasted of harming WPE through his actions, which should establish intent. The core claim is that Matt/Automattic/WPF acting as a unit intentionally abused their collective power and relationship with WPE to cause harm on WPE and their customers, demanded payment to stop causing harm and on top of that attempted to pull said customers away to their for-profit alternatives.
Before you go and claim "but there are no warranties and SLAs on plugin repository", a supporting claim in the suit is that WPF plugin repository is hard-coded into WP software, therefore part of the overall service (volunteer effort maintaining the WP package) and selectively targeting users of WPF repository constitutes unfair business practice.
A distant analogy could be a tourist spot scam where nefarious party sees a family, offers their child a candy and then harasses parents to pay up. Or similarly with flowers for couples.
